About Crete Energy Venture Power Station Crete Illinois

Crete Energy Venture is an oil and gas-fired power generation station in Crete, Illinois, a Will County village approximately 30 miles south of downtown Chicago. The facility reportedly operates at approximately 89 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity and has been in operation since approximately 2002.

According to regulatory and corporate records:

  • Operating Entity: Earthrise Energy Inc. (100% ownership interest)
  • Asset Manager: Vision Ridge Partners (Denver-based sustainable energy asset management firm)
  • Facility Classification: Electric Power Generation — Fossil Fuel (NAICS Code 221112)

Crete Energy Venture began operations in the early 2000s — well after EPA began phasing out asbestos products — yet the facility may have incorporated asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) through several documented pathways:

  • Older turbines, compressors, and boilers reportedly installed with legacy asbestos components, allegedly sourced from manufacturers including and
  • Pre-existing infrastructure or building components from prior industrial use of the site
  • Construction materials and replacement parts manufactured and sold by companies, gaskets and packing,** and before EPA restrictions took full effect
  • Equipment refurbished with asbestos-containing gaskets, packing, insulation, and seals drawn from legacy product inventories

General Equipment at Crete Energy Venture Power Station Crete Illinois

The equipment below represents the systems and infrastructure documented or typically present at this facility during the era when asbestos-containing materials were specified in industrial construction. This is general facility-equipment reference — not a legal attribution of any specific product, manufacturer, or exposure event to this facility. Material-category and manufacturer information is addressed in the AsbestosIndex Product Crosswalk linked under the records table below.

Boilers View crosswalk › Steam Turbines View crosswalk › Steam Traps View crosswalk › Condensers View crosswalk › Feedwater Heaters View crosswalk › Cooling Towers View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Block Insulation View crosswalk › Refractory Lining View crosswalk › Valves View crosswalk › Gaskets View crosswalk › Pumps View crosswalk ›

Documented Asbestos Evidence

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) was notified under federal NESHAP rules, the work was logged, and the asbestos-containing material was confirmed and removed under regulated conditions. These are not allegations or estimates — they are paper records tying documented asbestos-containing material to this specific site.

No Illinois EPA NESHAP abatement notifications have been identified for this facility in current public records. Per the framing above, absence of state-agency documentation should not be read as absence of asbestos — only as absence of a formal, regulated abatement event meeting reporting thresholds. Workers who recall encountering pipe insulation, block insulation, gaskets, or other asbestos-era construction materials at this facility may still have viable claims regardless of whether a state record exists.

Material Categories in Documented Records

The materials documented above (and similar asbestos-containing materials commonly encountered in records of this type) appear in the AsbestosIndex catalog with historical manufacturer and trust-fund information. Click a category to view manufacturers historically associated with that material:

Thermal System Insulation View crosswalk › Asbestos-Cement Board View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Roofing & Flashing View crosswalk › Spray Fireproofing View crosswalk › Floor Tile & Mastic View crosswalk › Ceiling Tile View crosswalk › Gaskets & Packing View crosswalk ›

Who May Have Been Exposed at Crete Energy Venture Power Station Crete Illinois

Asbestos-related diseases result overwhelmingly from occupational exposure. At power generation facilities, workers in specific trades may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials — often without adequate protective equipment and frequently without any knowledge of the hazard.

Members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis, Missouri) — whose geographic jurisdiction extends into southern and central Illinois — and Heat and Frost Insulators Local 27 (Kansas City) performing work in Illinois may have been assigned to Crete Energy Venture or to affiliated facilities throughout the Mississippi River corridor. Local 1 members have reportedly worked at power generation facilities throughout Missouri and Illinois, including at Labadie, Portage des Sioux, and comparable Will County facilities.

Exposure Activities:

  • Applied thermal pipe insulation to steam lines, fuel lines, and process systems using products allegedly including calcium silicate pipe insulation, Thermobestos, and calcium silicate with asbestos binders
  • Mixed, cut, and shaped asbestos-containing insulation blankets, block insulation, and pre-formed pipe insulation from manufacturers including and
  • Removed and replaced deteriorated asbestos-containing insulation during maintenance cycles
  • Worked in enclosed mechanical rooms where airborne fiber concentrations allegedly reached dangerous levels
  • Performed “rip-out” work — stripping aged asbestos insulation from pipes during plant turnarounds

Insulation removal generates extremely high fiber concentrations. Disturbing aged, friable asbestos insulation releases respirable fibers in quantities that may have exceeded occupational exposure limits by wide margins. Workers who performed this work may have been exposed to fiber levels many times above federal thresholds. Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 members have been plaintiffs in asbestos litigation filed in both St. Louis City Circuit Court and Madison County, Illinois, reflecting the multi-state work history common among tradespeople in this industrial region.

Critical Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Illinois law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (735 ILCS 5/13-202). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (740 ILCS 180/2). The two deadlines run on separate tracks — preserving one does not extend the other.

The personal-injury clock runs from diagnosis, not from exposure. Mesothelioma latency is typically 20 to 50 years, so workers exposed in the 1950s–1980s are being diagnosed today.

Practical first steps

  1. Document what you remember. Pay stubs, W-2s, union cards, photographs, coworker names, and dates of employment. The WorkChain widget on this page can save a copy you can email yourself.
  2. Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
  3. Identify household members. Spouses who laundered work clothing and children of plant workers are eligible for secondary-exposure claims when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.
  4. Speak with an asbestos attorney with Illinois experience. The first conversation is free and confidential. Asbestos trust-fund claims and civil claims run on different tracks — both can be pursued in parallel.

Asbestos-Related Diseases

Asbestos fiber exposure can cause several specific diseases that typically appear decades after the original exposure. The latency period — the gap between exposure and diagnosis — usually runs 20 to 50 years. That's why workers exposed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are receiving diagnoses today.

Mesothelioma

A rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal), or heart (pericardial). Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, which is why a mesothelioma diagnosis often points directly to historical workplace exposure. Average latency from first exposure to diagnosis is 30-50 years.

Asbestosis

A chronic, non-cancerous scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Asbestosis causes progressive shortness of breath, persistent cough, and reduced lung function. It does not improve with treatment, and it is a recognized basis for compensation under most trust schedules and civil claims.

Lung Cancer

Asbestos exposure significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, particularly when combined with a history of smoking. Asbestos-related lung cancer is compensable under the same trust schedules and civil claim avenues as mesothelioma.

Other Recognized Diseases

Pleural plaques, pleural thickening, laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and certain gastrointestinal cancers are also recognized as asbestos-related under various trust schedules and case-law authorities, though eligibility and proof requirements vary by claim type.

If you have any of these diagnoses and you worked at this facility, lived with someone who did, or were exposed in any documented capacity, you may have a claim worth pursuing. Speak with an attorney before assuming you don't qualify.

Cross-State & Regional Corridor Workers

Crete Energy Venture sits within a broader industrial geography stretching from the Chicago metropolitan area southward through Will and Kankakee Counties, connecting via the Mississippi River industrial corridor to major industrial facilities in the St. Louis metropolitan area and along the Missouri and Illinois shores of the Mississippi. This corridor — encompassing facilities such as Labadie Power Plant (Union Electric/Ameren, Franklin County, Missouri), Portage des Sioux Power Plant (Ameren Missouri, St. Charles County, Missouri), Granite City Steel (Madison County, Illinois), and Monsanto chemical operations (St. Louis County, Missouri) — shared common construction trades, union labor pools, and maintenance contractors throughout the mid-to-late 20th century.

Workers and union members who performed itinerant or multi-facility work throughout this corridor may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials at multiple sites over the course of their careers. If you worked at Crete Energy Venture and at other facilities in this corridor, your cumulative exposure history is directly relevant to your legal claim, potential settlement value, and medical prognosis.

Data Sources

Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:

If specific equipment or product claims in this article are sourced from a non-public database, the source is identified parenthetically within the text above.